America’s Best Trout Streams

America’s Best Trout Streams

The middle of the night is a wonderful time to go fishing. No matter how heavy the flow, we can wade to the most advantageous position. Our casts unfurl with uncanny precision, and flies drift wakelessly until the dimpled take. It is then that slashing rainbows,...
Great Guide Not

Great Guide Not

I owe much of what I know about how, where, and when to fish to great guides. Guides who spend day after day on the same water accompanying myriad clients of varied ability and temperament amass an abundance of knowledge that’s ours for the learning. Most of the time...
An Old Parker Finds New Life

An Old Parker Finds New Life

To restore or not, that is the question. How many times have each of us thought about having a fine old gun refinished only to be cautioned that having it reblued or restocked will diminish its value? Several years ago at a small gun show in a church social hall, I...
Where There is a Wil…

Where There is a Wil…

A painter he is, and that’s what he always wanted to be… His house is what realtors, in Salisbury, Maryland, call a two-story “Colonial.” It sits near the back of a tasteful subdivision — meaning one where developers have left standing the native loblolly...
Linda Besse Adventures in Art

Linda Besse Adventures in Art

Don’t think of Linda as some sort of five-foot-four female Indiana Jones who’s hellbent on adventure. Rather, she’s a rare spirit who is both good and lucky, an unbearable combination for a wildlife artist. The leopard had appeared fairly tame....
Greg Beecham Wildlife Artist Coming Home

Greg Beecham Wildlife Artist Coming Home

It’s only natural that Greg Beecham should feel as he does. His dad, Tom Beecham…drilled drawing into him before the youngsters years had reached his teens. Greg Beecham’s dusty brown felt hat rides high on his forehead, the way a cowboy sits straight on his...
Deep Feelings

Deep Feelings

In many ways John Hamberger was more an impressionistic artist than a painter of fish portraits. On the vintage plaster of the kitchen wall, left of the table where winter window light refracts through a collection of old pop bottles, is taped a snapshot of a man...
Beyond the Boundaries

Beyond the Boundaries

“But there was something there — a different kind of contemporary realism.” Imagine for a moment that you and I are with artist Adriano Manocchia, relaxing on Adirondack chairs under the eave of the porch at his house in Cambridge, New York, a double haul...
Lightning – Deadly Bolts from the Blue

Lightning – Deadly Bolts from the Blue

Hunters and anglers are particularly vulnerable to these fiery sky wires. Around 6 a.m. on Sunday, November 5, 2017, Curtis Atkins and one of his hunting buddies sat in their truck near Zanesville, Ohio, debating whether to hunt. Skies had been variably cloudy during...